My Family History Through MS Delta Plantations

Plantations have played an integral part in Southern history and the development of Southern culture, but these particular plantations are special because my family sharecropped here, and still lives in the area. My fashion and lifestyle are intimately tied to this.

This is the last remaining sharecropper cabin on the plantation my grandmother lived on before she moved to town in Leland, Mississippi. Her, her 11 siblings, her mother and stepfather, and her son and daughter (my mother) lived in one identical to this one.

My paternal family is buried under this tree, including my Choctaw great-grandmother and my great-grandfather who once shot and killed a white overseer on a plantation for insulting his mother. This tree is just off the plantation my father grew up on in Sunflower County, Mississippi.

This street sign marks the street where my mother was born on a plantation just outside of Leland, Mississippi.

This once was the store on the plantation where my mother was born. It was owned by the brother of the white man who murdered my great-grandfather, forcing my grandmother’s family to leave his plantation to eventually settle on this one after short stints one a few others.